Thought Number One: There's going to be some changes made.
In the past two days, I have seen portions of three interviews with Marissa Mayer, the CEO and President of Yahoo . Marissa is currently in the news because of a policy change that many feel is unfair, if not, positively primeval. As the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, she has the reputation for being a notorious workaholic and, if one is to believe in the chatter on Twitter and Facebook...Marissa seems to be setting woman's rights back to the 1950's....actually according to Forbes, it is setting it back to the Stone Age.
So what is behind all the brouhaha at Yahoo!? Marissa is rounding up the employees and mandating that they come to work. She is doing away with telecommuting. A memo sent out by Jackie Reses, the chief of HR, that says in part:
To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo! and that starts with physically being together.
Marissa did not start off her reign at Yahoo! on the best foot, as she only took only two weeks off for her maternity leave. In a culture that is wanting longer maternity and paternity leaves as well as flexibility to work around their families, it would seem that Marissa is rankling more than a few Yahooians.(I don't think that is really a word..but let's pretend it is.)
Hundreds of staffers now are in the position of deciding whether to work at the office or look for a different job...and they don't like it one little bit.
It really shouldn't have been a huge surprise for Marissa to pull in the troops. She comes from the ranks of Google corporation. Companies such as Google and Facebook have created work environments to encourage employees to come together. They believe the interaction sparks brain-storming, innovation and inspiration. They have designed their work spaces to be comfortable and fun as well as offering amenities such as gourmet meals, dry cleaning service, haircuts, gyms and swimming pools and day care.
When people ask how many Google employees telecommute, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette told an Australian tech audience last week, he replies, "As few as possible."
So while Marissa's new policy doesn't actually go into effect until June, it is stirring up a fierce debate on the Internet. A tech blog All Things D has run several articles with both opponents and proponents weighing in on the controversy. According to All Things D, sources within the company said Marissa was irked to see how slow the parking lots fills up on any given day and how quickly it empties in the afternoon. There are those that believe that perhaps the employees have taken advantage of the system and now have to come together to reinvent a company that has gotten complacent.
Maybe not all those employees affected would agree, however. One staffer's email said," When a working mother is standing behind this, you know we are a long way from a culture that will honor the thankless sacrifices that women too often make."
Thought Number Two: A CEO has to do what a CEO has to do
While the debate rages on, concerning the whether this new policy is anti-mom or if it is some devious method of getting rid of under productive employees without the hassle of layoffs, Yahoo has seen improvements since Marissa has taken over. The stock has gone up substantially and major changes have taken place on the Yahoo web site. Perhaps..right or wrong...it's her call... HOW she plans on turning an under-performing company into a better, bigger, brighter YAHOO!.
As I am a person that works out of a home office and my husband works sporadically out of a home office, I can see the pros and cons of working at a workplace and the convenience of working at home. I do think for me I am more productive when I am in the office...but that's just me. The fact I am sitting here typing a blog and drawing little cartoons might be an indicator of my productive use of my time, heh? Maybe the answer is the productivity of the employee and what the company sets as the employee's goals.
It does have "hierarchy" in it's name. ....although, I am not at all clear what any of that means. This odd and rather long name was coined in 1994 by two electrical engineering PhD candidates at Stanford University: David Filo and Jerry Yang.
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